Category: Monthly Updates

It’s a new month today, and while my ears and sinuses may still be infected after my trip to Texas, I can still type (As an aside: Nose sprays suck. Leave an AWFUL taste in the back of your throat. Will be happy to be full and alive again). So, you get this “Beginning of the month and what I plan to do” thing.

It’s something I just came up with, but whatever.

The general overview for the month is pretty simple:

Get the Web Store 100% up and running

Send DigiBadge Minis back for fixing.

Post bounties (See below for details)

That’s it. Three goals. Let’s go over them so you know what I’m talking about.

Web Store

For the Web Store, I basically need to take and update pictures of things. There are a few things I need to acquire beforehand, so the goal is to have everything working between mid-month andend-of-month. To be clear, I am making zero guarantees about stock – This is just getting everything functional so that when I have stock, it can be sold.

Once the Web Store is up and running, expect New Product posts to start popping up. I have a number of things in the works, but I will be rationing them out so I can spend time and make sure they’re working properly. My goal is to have 1-2 New Products Monthly so it will be a mid-month post of new things.

Fixing the DigiBadge Minis

So, for those of you that haven’t seen: The DigiBadge Minis are borked. In short, they had an ATMega328 put on them, when they should have had an ATMega328P. Not MUCH of a difference, except it makes them not work. The Non-P 328 has issues with not having a crystal – Many things I read said it simply wouldn’t work. Guess what? The DigiBadge Mini doesn’t have a crystal!

But wait! There’s more!

The biggest issue with them is the methodology which people used to set the fuses on them in the first place. They used “High-Voltage” Programmers which ran 12V through the chips. This is high enough that it forces the fuses to set how they want them to set, although there were still the mentioned issues with the crystals. This is great! Except it would fry the SPI flash that’s on the DigiBadge Minis.

So how am I fixing them? In short: I’m not! I’m going to send them back to the PCB house in China. There, they’ll pull the 328s off, put the 328Ps on, and also add on the LCD Screens. I had sourced those screens separately, as they couldn’t find them. Also, as I am sourcing the 328Ps, I’ll be able to put the bootloader on before sending them out. Programming 250 of them will be super tedious, but I’ll be able to weed out any bad ones while I’m at it.

Bounties!

So, you know what a bounty is, right? Someone asks you to do the thing, you do the thing, and they pay you for doing the thing. In this reference, the “Thing” is generally going to be coding. Because I, in general, don’t like it. I do have some stipulations on things I will bounty, and I will not take requests for bounties. I’m currently debating on allowing others to put up bounties on the bounty board, and how I would handle that, but at the moment it’s just Phoenixborn bounties.

How will bounties work? Well, here’s a handy dandy list:

Bounties will be posted on the Bounties Board (This page!), and mentioned in relevant blog posts.

Bounties will be for open-source only. They will be usable by everyone, for free, and while they may be inspired by specific hardware or software, they shouldn’t be limited to only that hardware.

Bounties will not be re-sold. IE, I won’t take the Bounty Hunter’s work, repackage it, and sell it as a Phoenixborn product. It may be used or modified to be used in a Phoenixborn product.

Bounties will not be limited to Phoenixborn code. I might put a bounty on an issue that’s open on an Adafruit code base, or even someone’s personal code base.

Bounties must be claimed. While I don’t expect a giant number of bounties (That’d be a lot of money!), I still won’t be keeping a super-active eye on them.

Bounties can only be claimed upon completion and verifying that all goals are met.

Bounties have specific requirements to be claimed. These will, of course, vary between bounties, and some may be optional (Perhaps for a higher payout). These requirements will be checked when a bounty is claimed

Bounty requirements can be changed at any time, including after a claim has been submitted.

Bounty claims can be rejected even if they technically fit all requirements. If the requirement is to display a BMP in 1 second on a 320×240 screen, and someone makes code that will work within the time frame on one image but on many others it takes 2 or 3 second or whatever, then it will be rejected. The spirit of the bounty matters.